The electronics industry is generally divided into two main segments: application products companies and semiconductor companies. The application products companies segment includes the companies that design, manufacture, and sell the wide variety of semiconductor-based goods. The semiconductor companies segment includes integrated circuit (IC) design companies (i.e., fabless companies which may design and/or sell semiconductor chips), foundries (i.e., companies that manufacture chips for others), and partially or fully integrated companies that may design, manufacture, package and/or market chips to application products companies.
There is a large range of semiconductor-based goods available across a broad spectrum of applications, i.e., goods which include one or more semiconductor devices, in applications ranging from manufactured printed circuit boards to consumer electronic devices (stereos, computers, toasters, microwave ovens, etc.) and automobiles (which, for example, include semiconductor devices in fuel injection, anti-lock brake, power windows and other on-board systems). Thus, as one might imagine, there also are a wide variety of semiconductor devices available to meet the various requirements of such products and applications.
Perhaps the two most familiar types of semiconductor devices today are microcontroller and microprocessor computer chips. Microcontrollers, which are the “brains” of a broad range of consumer and industrial applications, differ from microprocessors primarily from the standpoint of the end-user consumer. Typically, consumers concern themselves with the type of microprocessor in a product because the consumers will perceive different performance characteristics or results depending upon the type of microprocessor a product uses (e.g., personal computer applications). Microcontrollers, on the other hand, typically are embedded in an application system and do not enter into the equation when end-user consumers are making purchasing decisions.
Typically, semiconductor companies who offer microcontrollers to products companies provide the microcontroller with a set of features and capabilities appropriate for a particular product or application. Thus, microcontrollers may have a broad range of features and capabilities, and semiconductor companies typically tend to offer their customers a wide range of microcontroller products to meet their customers' needs. For example, a semiconductor company may offer a family of products including a feature-rich “high-end” product (e.g., for automobile applications) and one or more “low-end” products including fewer features (e.g., for household appliance applications).
But while an end-user consumer, concerned only with whether a product works, might be indifferent as to the microcontroller device included in a product, the product designer and manufacturer certainly are not. Product companies generally will expend great efforts to ensure that their products work properly and that consumers receive value and remain satisfied. Thus, product companies tend to select microcontrollers for use in an application based on their features and capabilities, not to mention costs and other factors.
In view of such circumstances, there tends to be vigorous competition amongst semiconductor companies for microcontroller “design wins.” In other words, at the design stage, when a products company is designing a product for a given application, semiconductor companies compete for having their microcontroller included in the product. Once a product company establishes a design and sets the functional pathway configuration for the interface between a microcontroller and the system in which the microcontroller is embedded, the product company is less likely to change the configuration to accommodate another microcontroller having a different functional pathway configuration. Such configuration changes typically result in increased costs for the product company due to the system in which the microcontroller is embedded having to be re-designed.
While there are a number of factors involved in any decision to award a design win, one such factor comprises a semiconductor company's product “roadmap.” Over time, end-user consumers generally tend to favor future generation consumer products having increased features at lower costs. Accordingly, product companies evaluating microcontroller products of two or more semiconductor companies today will consider whether the particular solutions being offered now will allow them to migrate easily from a basic first generation microcontroller to an enhanced future generation microcontroller having increased capabilities and features. Such migration—without the products company incurring extensive system re-design costs—in general is necessary if the products company is to offer the future generation products that consumers typically demand.
Accordingly, there remains a need for a simple and convenient functional pathway configuration for the interface between a microcontroller and the system in which the microcontroller is embedded, e.g., that tends to promote increased performance with lower costs.